Human Tetris

Tetris is one of the all-time classic video games, but it’s best suited to people with a lot of free time on their hands. Apparently, though, maneuvering those little polygons around a video screen still wasn’t enough of a time suck for Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond. So, he set to work on a real-life version of the game with people in place of pixels.

Using an auditorium as the “board,” he outfitted small groups of extras in colored shirts and sat them close together to form the various Tetris shapes. Then he took nearly 900 pictures from an overhead view, moving the groups slightly and adding new ones in each frame. When shown in rapid succession, the photos give the illusion that the pieces are rotating and descending just as they do in the video game. They even appear to vanish when they form a line across an entire row of seats.

The effect here is pretty remarkable. But in case Tetris isn’t your game, Reymond has also done similar versions of Pong, Pole Position and Space Invaders.